According to a recent GAO report, several recent federal pay studies vary widely in their conclusions and should not be taken in isolation when trying to determine how federal pay and benefits compare with other sectors.

GAO conducted the study to try to improve the understanding of federal pay in light of recent studies released with have reached widely varying conclusions on pay.

The following are the pay studies, their authors, and their conclusions which GAO analyzed:

Biggs/Richwine; American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research – the authors found that the average federal worker’s total compensation package was 61% higher than a comparable private sector worker

Congressional Budget Office – the study concluded that the average federal worker’s total compensation package was 16% higher than a comparable private sector worker

Edwards; Cato Institute – the author concluded that the average federal worker’s total compensation package was 100% than a comparable private sector worker

Project on Government Oversight – the study concluded that the average federal worker’s total compensation package was 20% higher than a comparable private sector worker

Sherk; Heritage Foundation – the author concluded that the average federal worker’s total compensation package was 30-40% higher than a comparable private sector worker

President’s Pay Agent – the study found that the average federal worker’s pay was 24% lower than comparable non-federal workers

The aforementioned studies used the following methodologies to compare pay:

Job-to-job approach – compares pay for similar jobs of various types based on job-related attributes such as occupation, does not take into account the personal attributes of the workers currently filling them

Trend analysis approach – —illustrates broad trends in pay over time without controlling for attributes of the workers or jobs

GAO was asked to examine the following:

How annual pay adjustments for the GS system are determined

The extent to which the pay increases and awards available to GS employees recognize individual performance, and how the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) provides oversight of pay increases and awards

How selected studies compare federal and private pay and total compensation and the factors that may account for the different findings

GAO compared and contrasted the differences between the studies’ approaches, methodologies, and data sources, interviewed the studies’ authors, people with expertise in compensation issues, and agency officials responsible for the data, but is not making any recommendations in its report.

About the Author

Ian Smith is one of the co-founders of FedSmith.com. He enjoys writing about current topics that affect the federal workforce. Ian also has a background in web development and does the technical work for the FedSmith.com web site and its sibling sites.